ENTRIES in Latin, found in a note-book, amongst records of scientific observations, supposed to be from the hand of Dr. Adrian Perrenot. The beginning without date, but probably written about the month of August, in the year 1577.
‘It is needful that I write. There is no other way of getting rid of these people, with their everlasting chatter-meant for consolation! If they see me writing they will think I have returned to my work, and leave me in peace.
‘Moreover, if I do not occupy myself in some way, I shall go mad. That would be horrible. I know how madmen are used.—And then, to cease to be oneself and yet to continue alive is a thing nature shudders at. But I need not fear that; for as soon as I begin to see visions and dream dreams, I shall know my disease—and my remedy. In a book on yonder shelf there is a certain page which holds the secret. Sometimes I ask myself—why not take that medicine now? I have no very distinct answer to give; save this, that it seems a coward’s trick.
It is needful that I write—but what? I cannot think, I cannot observe, I cannot study. I have tried all these—in vain. For lack of aught else, I set down the irritation I feel at the foolish talk of the people around me.
They tell me of winged angels, of crowns and harps of gold, of white robes and everlasting hymn-singing. Not in one of these things can I believe; and if I did, I would not care for them. Not a hundredth part of what I care for this little glove, crumpled and worn at the finger ends by Roskĕ. It is Roskĕ I want, Roskĕ! Not a pale shadow, nor a dream, nor an angel, bah Roskĕ. And Roskĕ is not. Those two words say all. If I were to fill volumes with lamentation, I should still have said no more than this—Roskĕ is not.
What a mystery it all is! But yesterday, as it were, there was a little being full of life and thought and motion, a soul, a person, a new thing in the world, like a new star. Only stars do not grow, and Roskĕ was all growth, all promise and prophecy. But she leans too far over a balcony, and in one moment all becomes—goes out into—nothing! If I tried to destroy this little half-worn glove, it would be a harder thing to do, and would take longer. Roskĕ nothing nowhere!
It is unthinkable. If I think of it, the thing I greatly fear will come upon me. I shall go mad. When Marchemont died I had none of these thoughts. I thought, like other people, that he went to heaven. In those days I was a good Calvinist, or I thought I was. But, when the first glow of feeling passed away, the old Italian spirit of unbelief and mockery returned. And yet not the same—never the same again. In the old days at Padua, I had not known the mystery of a great love. That changes everything. When one loves, one takes this world seriously, and one wants another world to go on loving in. Without that, we should be like Duke Maurice of Saxony, when he refused to make a prisoner of the Emperor Charles. “No,” said he, “for such a bird as that I have no cage.” For the white bird of love is the cage of our life on earth all too strait; and they who think they have no other, had best open wide their hands, and let the bird fly back again to heaven.
‘I could not do that. Nor did my faith go from me all at once, or “with observation.” Rather was it like a building which continues to look fair to the eye, while the waters all the time are sapping its foundations.
‘However far I went in the studies that I loved, it was still matter, matter only, that I had to do with. I found nothing else, nothing more. I never, indeed, found anything which said to me distinctly, “No spirit, no God.” No voice said “No” —but then no voice said “Yes.” There was no voice, nor word, nor any that answered.
‘Nor has there been yet, nor will there be forever and ever. The world rolls on, and keeps its Bread, eternal silence throughout the Ages.
‘So has it been from the beginning, so will it be to the end. Yet they say—Protestants and Catholics alike—that the eternal silence was broken, once for all, when Christ rose from the dead. But that was a long way off; a long while ago. So ever with these marvels, of which the Catholics boast such a vast array. Always far away, long ago—never here—now! Let Papist or Protestant, Anabaptist or Jew, bring Roskĕ back to me from the dead, and I will believe!
‘My faith was already wavering, when there came the years—the accursed years—of Alva’s Government. Was that of a nature to convince any man of the rule of a righteous and merciful God? The world will never know half the horrors I have known—and would I could forget them! Then the War, with its unimaginable miseries! Every one gave God thanks for the relief of Leyden; but I held my peace, remembering Haarlem and Naarden and Zutphen and Maastricht, which were not relieved. And even in Leyden, the thousands who might have been saved, had the relief but come a little sooner!
‘Would not I have saved them, if I could? And I am only a man, and not half as good a man as others I have known—Marchemont, for instance, or Duifhuis. That God, who could, would not, is what nothing shall make me believe. God not merciful, not just! God, a magnified Duke of Alva or King of Spain! If I find myself coming to think that, I shall try the medicine yonder book prescribes, and die. No; I may doubt God, deny him even, but while I keep my reason I will not blaspheme Him.
‘Clearly, all is Chance, Fate, Destiny, or whatever else we choose to call this mad confusion we are born into. Is it not proved, even by what happened to Roskĕ? It happened, it was an accident pure and simple. If any one of a hundred trifling things had been different! If I had yielded to her unselfish wish, and taken her place on the balcony! If Marie had been there, with her ready eye and hand! If any one who was there had caught her clothing! If she had not thrown those flowers! If—if—if. A man might go on with the “ifs” forever! Yet those who believe in God and in His Providence, must believe that each one of the least of these “ifs” was known to—guided—directed by—Him. Impossible!’
Added later, in ink of a different colour.— ‘But whereunto serveth this idle reasoning, save to break again a broken heart? Duifhuis, who believes that God does order all things, says that in the future life He will repay those who have suffered here. But is there a future life? Is there? My whole soul cries out the question—cries it out into the desert of space. And there comes no answer. No God, no future. No future, then certainly no God. They two must stand or fall together.
‘What use in writing the gospel of despair? I will write no more in this book.’
Later.— ‘It is midwinter now, and very cold. I am reminded of Marchemont, and that winter long ago in Antwerp. Marchemont told me something ere he died, which I was to tell again to Rose. He had fallen into sore trouble and conflict of mind; no doubt from bodily conditions, which at the time I did not accurately diagnose. But he came forth triumphant, holding fast by this one clue—wherever Christ is, there also would he be, whether in life or death, in being or in nothingness. No power was strong enough to part him from Christ. Christ? What magic is there in that Name? It is strange—strange!
‘The Prince too—he said to me, “Christ comfort you.” Very different men those two, but both of them able—the Prince immeasurably the ablest I have ever known. I had been wont to think his faith a weapon in the hand of his statecraft—but verily that day, when his hand touched and his eyes looked into mine, he spoke from his inmost heart.’
Another entry.— ‘I have just found the key of Roskĕ’s little chest, where she used to keep her treasures. It was lying all these months in my desk; I must have looked at it a hundred times. Oh, that I could find thus the key to the great mystery! But the trouble is, there is none to find. At times my sorrow and loneliness press upon me so that I would fain lie down and die. It is well my patients give me work that I cannot wholly neglect. With them I can talk—I can smile even—while within all is dark— dark —blackness of darkness.’
Another entry still.— ‘Is the thought that has come to me now worth the trouble of writing down? I hardly know—and yet here it is. Suppose for a moment that there is a key to the mystery of the world, and that this key is Christ. (And certainly the power of that Name is a thing to wonder at—Whence comes it?) Let me try how the key would fit the wards. The mystery is, if God be there at all, why does He not show Himself? Why does He dwell in the thick darkness? Why does He keep silence and make no sign?
‘Has Christ come out of the silence and the darkness to show us why? To tell us they will pass? To tell us God is, God loves us, God hears us?
‘O God—O Christ, if indeed Thou art, speak to me, answer me! I do not believe in Thee—not yet— but I want Thee! With all my heart, and soul, and mind I want Thee!
‘If I were blind, and knew not whether Marie were in the room or no, I would call. If there, she would answer me, and I should know. Things which we cannot see, we know by experiment. If we make a demand upon them in their own line, they will answer it.’
First dated entry, March 1, 1578.— ‘What I wrote last shall stand. Another word I add now. Not, I believe in Christ, but—I love Him. I have been reading the Gospels over carefully, and truly the record of that life is like naught else. Those miracles, at which I used to smile!—If one day come to believe in Him, I will thank Him, not that He wrought so many, but that He wrought so few. Any one inventing the story would have made Him do, what I would do here, in stricken Holland, if I could. One sick man healed, one dead man raised, why not a hundred, when you are about it? So they are far enough removed in time and space, what is there to stop you? What stopped the pen of the evangelists?
‘But there is a far deeper question, What stopped the hand of Christ? Why, if He came to save, did He not save every one?
‘Why did He not save Himself? Why did His own story end, not like Leyden, but like Naarden?
‘O Christ, Thou art one of us indeed! Thou didst take Thy place, not with the victors, but with the victims. Thou didst drink to the very dregs the cup of suffering. Thou knewest loss, anguish, shame, defeat—nay, it would Almost seem as if, once at least, Thou knewest despair. I, stricken man, stretch out my hand to Thee across the Ages, and call Thee, Brother!
‘March 3.—What if God meant all that?
‘March 12.—I can conceive of reasons why God could not stop the world’s agony all at once, and entirely. There may be good things that can only come out of pain—no other way. But how to make us know that? How to make us understand that, in spite of all, He is there—that He loves us, will deliver us, some time, some way?
‘Marchemont once told me a story of Dr. Luther, how, when he was mourning over his sine, Vicar-General Staupitz said to him, “Would you be only a painted sinner, to have only a painted Saviour?” Had we only painted needs and sorrows, a promise, a message, a vision of hope might have sufficed us. But so terribly real is the pain, the woe—that His Son, His own Son, had to come and share it, to make us believe that throughout it all He loves—He will save. Nothing less would do.
‘March 13.—Here I have been assuming what I never proved—discussing the question: “Does He love?” before I have settled that other, “Does He live?” And yet both seem one to me. And perhaps the only way to prove either is the way of experiment.
‘God the Divine Father, Christ the Divine Son. That is how He puts it to us. Are these names types and symbols, by means of which we may apprehend what by no means at all, in our present state, we can comprehend?
‘March 17.—Perhaps, on the other hand, it is our fatherhood and sonship which are types and symbols of the everlasting truth? Father and child, and the great love there is between them. So the Father, so God is said to love—whom? The Divine Son. But what help in that for us, for the world? —I have it.— “God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son.” Gave His Son to suffer and to die! For what for whom would I have given Roskĕ?
‘O God, when it was in Thine heart to tell us Thou lovest us throughout all, surely Thou knewest how!
‘March 18.—I think it were better for me to write no more in this book. A great fear possesses me that my reason is going from me. O God, save me from that doom!
‘March 19.—Yet why am I so much afraid? The devout men I know are sane enough, saner indeed than other people. Faith in God made Marchemont what he was; Rose would have been good without it, but it certainly made her happy. While it inspired the men of Leyden with a heroism that will be remembered as long as the world lasts. And without it, I suppose the Prince of Orange would now be governing these countries under Philip, and planning royal marriages for his daughters in his splendid court in Brussels, whilst we should be groaning in misery under the Edicts and the Inquisition. It works well, this faith in God.
‘March 20.—I do not think it contrary to reason to let the heart speak. There may be truths reason cannot find, as there are facts that elude the senses. Nothing real but what we can cee or touch? Is love not real then?
‘March, 21.—I have been looking over that little box of Roskĕ’s; and not without tears, for, thank God, I can weep now. Amongst her treasures is a little windmill; a pretty toy enough, which I remember Dirk’s making for her in Leyden. I thought at first she had kept it for his sake; but I saw beneath it a scrap of paper, with the words, in her large imperfect writing, “Father mended it.” So I did, after Dirk went away, and very badly too. Yet she kept it thus. True, loving little heart! The heart has ceased to beat; but the love, has that perished wholly out of the world?
‘March 28.— I have written: “If ever I come to believe in Christ, I will thank Him that His works of wonder on earth were so few.” And now I do thank Thee, O Christ, for that veiling and restraining of Thy power. Thou didst come to dwell among us—not to save us, all at once, from all our toil and sorrow, but to be the living promise and prophecy of the salvation God will have wrought for us when all His work is finished. Thou didst die, because we have to die. Thou didst suffer, because we must suffer. God did not take the pain away, but in Thee He did a better thing, He came and shared it. Thou, O Christ, art sharing it even still in sympathy; for is there not, in the midst of the Throne, “the Lamb as it had been slain,” the type of sacrifice and suffering?
‘March 30.— If Thou didst die because we must die; then also Thou didst live again that we might live again. I see it now. Thank God! Thank God! Only let me not die of the joy of it.
‘And the souls I love live also with Thee, where Thou art. Then Thou wilt let me see them again somewhere, somehow.’
Later.— ‘Am I forgetting, in my strange new-born joy, the fact of the world’s sin—as real a thing as the world’s pain? I too, I am a sinful man, and He is holy, else could I not believe in Him at all. But He has provided for all that, and by the same suffering and sacrifice. I will think of it hereafter. Just to-day I rest—rest in the joy that floods my whole being at the thought that He is.
‘March 31.—He is. |iI| hold by that; I hold by Him. As Marchemont said, Marchemont who is with Him now—“Surely in what place my Lord the King shall be, whether in death or life, even there also will Thy servant be.”
‘April 7.—A strange thing has come to me to-day, letter from my old friend Christopher Plantin, the printer of Antwerp. He tells sad stories of the ruin wrought there by the Spanish Fury; but says the town is quiet now and good order. The foreign soldiers have been driven out; and the citadel which Alva made so strong for himself razed to the ground. There is full liberty of conscience; and Plantin urges me to come back to them, that my treatise on the Hand, which he has in his possession, may be printed and illustrated under my own eye. Shall I do it?’